Oscar 2013 nominations: 9 snubs and surprises

With the announcement of the 85th annual Academy Award nominees, host Seth MacFarlane and co-presenter Emma Stone made many Oscar dreams come true this morning. But not all deserving hopefuls made the coveted list. As we try to erase the memory of MacFarlane’s lame Hitler joke and enjoy Oscar week, check out some of the biggest snubs and surprises of the 2013 Academy Awards nominations.

Snub – Javier Bardem

When it comes to great performances, it’s not the size of the role, but how you use it. As the villainous Raoul Silva in the latest Bond film, Skyfall, Bardem uses every precious moment of his criminally little screen time to craft a surprisingly robust character. Through a series of masterfully conceived monologues, he breathes life into the first Bond villain out for personal vendetta rather than world domination. Like Skyfall itself, Bardem’s Silva was better than it had any right to be, and likely overlooked by the Academy for that reason. (-Jonathan Dekel)

Ben Affleck accepts the SAG Award for outstanding movie ensemble on behalf of the cast of Argo. This won’t happen at the Oscars. Photo: Getty Images

Snub – Ben Affleck

After claiming two BAFTA nods just the day before, Ben Affleck was missing from Oscar’s best actor race. And even though he’s been in front of the camera since the days when ABC was still running after-school TV specials, the last few years have revealed that Affleck’s even better behind it. (His 6 career Razzie nods not considered.) Argo might be his most accomplished project as a director, and in a best director category that snubbed several “sure things,” Affleck’s omission is another surprise. Going into the Oscar nominations, Affleck was already recognized for his work by the Golden Globes, the BAFTAs (for both best director and best actor), the National Board of Review. Plus, there’s always the common wisdom that it’s much harder to direct yourself than it seems. If there’s a silver lining, at least Oscar included the film in its best picture category. (-Leah Collins)

Snub – Looper, The Hunger Games, take your pick of popcorn movies

We get it. It’s the Oscars. And every year — with or without the bloated possibility of 10 best picture contenders — it’s only going to be certain kind of film that will be considered. Still, in a year where a James Bond sequel was considered to be a serious contender, why not so many other “Hollywood” flicks? If Oscars were awarded for originality alone, then where was Cabin in the Woods, a horror film… No wait, sci-fi film? Let’s just say it re-invented the genre and it’d have been nice to see it get a screenplay nod. Or Looper, the Joseph Gordon-Levitt/Bruce Willis time-travelling action drama, or the Hunger Games — all of which featured tighter story-telling than the other flicks that you normally see in the People’s Choice Awards ghetto. (-LC)

It may be due to his subjective good looks, or his perhaps his academic acumen, but Bradley Cooper routinely gets less than a fair shake as an actor. So it was nice to see the Academy go out of its way to highlight Cooper’s manic – in a good way – performance in Silver Linings Playbook. As the audience’s flawed widower, Cooper’s charming personality perfectly offset his uncomfortably flawed existence, making his performance one of the year’s best. (-JD)

Snub – Michelle Williams

Last year, Williams earned her third Oscar nomination, playing Marilyn Monroe in My Week with Marilyn. It was certainly deserved, but it’s another movie performance that haunts us more, one she should have been recognized for this year. In Sarah Polley’s Take This Waltz, which arrived in North America theatres last summer (after an initial video-on-demand release in the U.S.) Williams plays an ordinary 20-something from Toronto. She’s married (to an emotionally absent Seth Rogen), a little lost in her career. And after a chance meeting with the man across the street, she begins to contemplate an affair. Compared to, say, resurrecting Hollywood’s most glamorous icon, you can see why the part’s a tough sell (and it’s been overlooked almost entirely on the awards circuit). The film’s story has its flaws, but Williams, always a skillfully subtle actress, is captivating — even as her character becomes lost in increasingly ugly decisions. (-LC)

Skyfall didn’t fall into Oscar’s good books.

Snub – Skyfall

Over the last 50 years we’re been classically conditioned to cheer for James Bond. So when the series produced a fitting beautiful tribute to the world’s most famous fictional spy, it’s no surprise that fans the world over collectively willed the possibility that Skyfall may actually garner a Best Picture nod from the Academy. However 2013 was not be Bond’s year, with the nominations proving to be Blofeldian in its underestimation of the vaulted franchise. (-JD)

Snub – Kathryn Bigelow/ Quentin Tarantino

As championed by the late Andrew Sarris, Auteur theory states that the success or failure of a film can be boiled down to the singular vision of its director. As two of the most striking auteurs working in Hollywood, it serves to reason that, as their films go, so too would Kathryn Bigelow and Quentin Tarantino. So when Zero Dark Thirty and Django Unchained were nominated for Best Picture, it left many in Hollywood scratching their heads when that their visionaries were left off the Best Director nominations. (-JD)

Snub – Marion Cotillard

There are few things Academy voters love more than body disfiguration, which is one of the many reasons (like her consistently strong performance, for example) we were surprised Marion Cotillard’s turn as a killer whale trainer who loses her legs in Rust and Bone was snubbed by Oscar voters. (-JD)

Snub – The Hunger Games soundtrack

Where’s Taylor Swift?! Where’s the Arcade Fire?! The best original song race doesn’t throw any bones to the Hunger Games soundtrack. And much as we’d have loved to flag-wave for an Arcade Fire nomination (the Montreal band wrote the sombre and militaristic Abraham’s Daughter for the film), it’s another snub that riles us to the point of mounting a rebellion. It’s just that this particular oversight happened months ago. When the 75-song long list of best original song contenders was revealed in August, it was clear Taylor Swift’s conributions to the T-Bone Burnett-produced soundtrack wouldn’t be included. (Swifty will just have to wait a while longer for that EGOT.) Though her current smash album, Red, is something of a pop re-invention, Swift’s Hunger Games compositions — Safe & Sound and Eyes Open — show off a more intimate performance style. But beyond that, the songs neatly capture the character of Hunger Games heroine Katniss Everdeen. Unfortunately, Swift’s songs didn’t even get a chance to be “culled” for Oscar because of the quirks of the Academy’s rulebook. (If a song doesn’t appear in the film, it can only be considered for competition if it runs as the first musical selection of the credits.) (-LC)